The software on Motorola’s upcoming Atrix 4G has already been subject to some stern (and premature) scrutiny, but here’s some rather more concrete information about it, courtesy of the company’s own spec page for the device. As it turns out, Moto intends to launch the Atrix with some of its hardware capabilities clipped — specifically its Tegra 2-derived power to encode 1080p content — but will deliver them to users in an update (hopefully soon) thereafter. LG’s Optimus 2X, which is built around the same dual-core chip from NVIDIA, has been spending its time before launch showing off exactly what those 1080p encoding skills can deliver — both with video recording and through its HDMI connection — so it’ll be a downer for Moto fans to learn that their hallowed new superphone won’t be able to match up at launch. Then again, when we think about how often phone makers fail to tap the full potential of their hardware, maybe we should just be happy that 1080p abilities are coming to the Atrix at all, eh?
We suspect the boys and girls over at AmazonWireless threw their Atrix 4G product page up early, because — among other red flags — the buy button doesn’t work, but one important detail we can glean from it is that they seem interested in selling it for $149.99 on a new contract or $599.99 off-contract. Now, there are a couple of possibilities here; first off, since the page likely isn’t supposed to be online, these prices might just be guesses or placeholders, but furthermore, keep in mind that AmazonWireless and other third-party wireless resellers typically charge less for devices on contract than carriers do, so we’d expect this to be at least $50 more directly from AT&T. Oh, and one other tidbit: searching for the phone on Amazon reveals a possible release date of February 11th, which would be even more aggressive than Moto’s end-of-February guidance. Again, possibly another guess or placeholder on Amazon’s part… but it’s a date to keep in the back of your head nonetheless.
[Thanks, Roman]
Update: Turns out the Inspire 4G is listed, too, for $99.99 on contract or $499.99 contract-free. Thanks, Justin S.!
Motorola has revealed smartphone sales have already dipped in anticipation of the Verizon iPhone 4, with the company’s Q4 performance impacted even before the official announcement had been made. According to CEO Sanjay Jha,”since the announcement of the iPhone, we have seen a little slow down in our sell through of devices at Verizon. There was anticipation of devices coming to Verizon even prior the announcement of the iPhone.” However, Jha also suggests that expectations around a flagship Motorola device in Q1 2011 also impacted the previous quarter’s sales.
Those new smartphones use Verizon’s high-speed 4G LTE network, and were well leaked in the run up to CES 2011 where they made their official debut. Smartphone shipments in Q4 reached 4.9m, lower than predictions of 5.2m, and Motorola has already warned investors to expect a net loss of $26-62m this quarter.
Still, Jha is confident that even with the iPhone 4 competing for Verizon customer mind-share, Motorola still stands a chance. “When customers go into the Verizon stores now, they’ll be offered choices” he suggests, “and time will tell what percentage of sales goes to which brand.”
Yes, we are deep in Q4 2010 financial reporting season, and Motorola’s freshly independent Mobility arm is latest to step up and deliver its figures. Total revenue over the past three months reached $3.4 billion, marking a 21 percent increase year-on-year, net revenue from mobile devices was $2.4 billion, up by 33 percent year-on-year, and handset shipments were a seemingly healthy 4.9 million. That figure’s disappointed Wall Street estimates, however — the collective expectation, according to MarketWatch, was 5.2 million — and the net profit of $80 million is barely (for a company of this size) in the black. More doom and gloom is cast by Motorola itself, which is predicting a difficult first quarter of 2011 that will end with the company losing between 9 and 21 cents per share in net terms. Ah well, let’s try to enjoy the sunshine of Moto making money today and forget the rainclouds of tomorrow.
Motorola had one of the best CES showings of any company in recent memory, and now we’ve got some rough ship dates for all that new gear: CEO Sanjay Jha just announced on the company’s earnings call that the Atrix 4G for AT&T and 3G Xoom for Verizon will arrive at “the end of February,” while the LTE-enabled Droid Bionic and LTE Xoom will arrive at “the end of the second quarter” as previously promised. That sounds good to us — and with that earlier Best Buy leak suggesting the Xoom will hit on February 17, we’re hoping that Moto’s taking a long view of when the end of February actually begins. Even better, a late February Xoom release supports those rumors that Honeycomb will be generally released in March, which is when the real Android tablet invasion will begin. It’s all happening, folks.
Update: Oh boy. Jha followed up his Xoom comments in the Q&A portion by hinting that the Xoom might slip to March, but that he’s very confident they’ll make their timeline. Fingers crossed.
Concerns regarding the Motorola DROID Bionic and ATRIX 4G and their power management systems have leaked this week, with sources close to those testing the Android smartphones claiming that issues with Motorola’s choice of power management unit (PMU) have led to overheating, RF interference and other problems. Established HowardForums source kbman first reported that the Bionic was prone to “severe overheating even while at idle” and later clarified that it was Motorola’s choice of PMU rather than a generic chipset issue which was to blame.
“The problem has to do with the PMU and causes a variety of issues including severe overheating even while at idle, power fluctuations affecting RF performance and cold boot issues. These things were told to me by someone who is testing the devices. I have no hands on experience myself.”
More worrying, originally it was claimed that the flaw in the two smartphones – which are set to arrive as flagships on Verizon and AT&T in the coming months – was “unfixable.” However, a further source subsequently suggested that Motorola was in fact working on the PMU issue and that it would “be solved, shortly” based on information from their own internal sources.
“I asked if the PMU was a discreet component on the board like with the original Droid(actually a dual PMIC solution) which controls both the AP(Applications Processor) and BP(Baseband Processor), he said “Yes both”.
I responded that that was bad because it meant that this could be laid directly at the feet of Moto because they selected that component as opposed to it having been an integrated chipset problem. He said “Yup!”.”
Obviously the whole purpose of testing is intended to catch problems such as these, but the proof will be in the real-world performance of the two smartphones. We’ll be keeping an eye on further reports to see what’s happening.
On Monday night the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued an order to temporarily stop the Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) takeover of Motorola’s wireless group. Huawei was worried it’s intellectual property and wireless patents that it shared with Motorola could be accessed by Nokia.
The District Court said, “Defendant Motorola [is] hereby ordered not to disclose any of the Plaintiff’s confidential information to Defendant Nokia Siemens Networks.” The court also ordered Motorola and NSN to give Huawei notice if China’s Ministry of Commerce, the last regulating body holding up the sale, takes any action regarding the purchase.
It’s only fair that Huawei would get to protect it’s patents and intellectual property from it’s competitors in the market like NSN.
Well, that didn’t take long at all: in response to Huawei’s lawsuit yesterday over concerns that Motorola could tell its dirty secrets to Nokia Siemens Networks in the wake of their $1.2 billion unit sale, a judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has issued a temporary ruling banning Motorola from disclosing any Huawei proprietary information to NSN. Technically, we suppose that doesn’t prevent the sale — which the two companies had hoped to close in early 2011 — from going through unabated, but in reality it probably does since there’s no clean way for the transfer to happen without including information that Huawei had previously shared with Moto. We’re sure this will take a little time to work itself out, but for the interim, looks like Huawei’s gotten its wish.
Huawei has announced that it has filed a suit against Motorola in US district court to prevent Motorola from infringing on Huawei IP. The suit seeks to prevent Motorola from transferring Huawei IP to Nokia Siemens Networks.
The suit comes as Nokia Siemens Networks seek to purchase the Motorola wireless network business for $1.2 billion. Huawei and Motorola have worked together in the radio access network and core network businesses since 2000.
Huawei fears that the IP it owns will be transferred to Nokia Siemens Networks. Huawei says that so far Motorola has offered no assurances that that its information will not be transferred to Nokia with the sale.
Motorola has revealed smartphone sales have 
